But the girl was, as the Gebr had claimed, rather more cleanly of person than Malgarita had been. In fact, she made unmistakable complaint that I was not, and with some reason. In coming here, I had not worn my new-bought clothes; they were too bulky and difficult to get out of and into. I was wearing the garments I had worn while crossing the Great Salt and the Karabil, and I daresay they were markedly odoriferous. They were certainly so caked with dust and sweat and dirt and salt that they could almost stand upright even when I got out of them.
The girl held them at arm’s length, by her fingertips, and said, “dirty-dirty!” and “dahb!” and “bohut purana!” and several other gargled Pashtun noises indicative of revulsion. “I send yours, mine together, be clean.”
She swiftly took off her own clothes, bundled them with mine, bawled what was evidently a call for a servant, and handed the bundle out the door. I confess that my attention was mainly on the first naked female body I had seen since Kashan; nevertheless, I noticed that the girl’s clothing was made of a material so coarse and thick that, though cleaner than mine, it also could almost have stood alone.
The girl’s body was more fetching than her face, it being slim but bearing amazingly large, round, firm breasts for such a slender figure. I assumed that that was one reason why the girl had chosen a career in which she would cater mainly to transient infidels. Muslim men are better attracted by a big fundament, and do not much admire women’s breasts, regarding them only as milk spouts. Anyway, I hoped the girl would make her fortune in her chosen career while she was still young and shapely. Every woman of those “Alexandrine” tribes, well before middle age, grows so gross in the rest of her physique that her once-splendid bosom becomes just one of a series of fleshy shelves descending from her several chins to her several rolls of abdomen.
Another reason why I hoped the girl would make a fortune was that her chosen career was clearly no pleasure to her. When I attempted to share with her the enjoyment of the sexual act, by arousing her with fondling of her zambur, I found she had none. At the arch tip of her mihrab, where the tiny tuning key should have been, there was no slightest protrusion. For a moment I thought she was pathetically deformed, but then I realized that she was tabzir, as Islam demands. She had nothing there but a fissure of soft scar tissue. That lack may have diminished my own delight in my several ejaculations, because every time I approached spruzzo and she cried, “Ghi, ghi, ghi-ghi!”—meaning “Yes, yes, yes-yes!”—I was aware that she was only feigning an ecstasy of her own, and I thought it sad. But who am I to call criminal other people’s religious observances? Besides, I soon discovered that I had a lack of my own to worry about.
The Gebr came and banged on the outside of the door, shouting, “What do you want for a single dirham, eh?”
I had to concede that I had had my money’s worth, so I let the girl get up. She went, still naked, out the door to fetch a pan of water and a towel, meanwhile calling down the corridor for the return of our laundered clothes. She set the pan of tamarind-scented water on the room’s brazier to warm, and was using it to wash my parts when the next knock came on the door. But the servant handed in only the girl’s garments, with a long spate of Pashtun that must have been an explanation. The girl came back to me, an unreadable expression on her face, and said tentatively, as if asking a question, “Your clothes burn?”
“Yes, I suppose they would. Where are they?”
“No got,” she said, showing me that she had only her own.
“Ah, you do not mean burn. You mean dry. Is that it? Mine are not dry yet?”
“No. Gone. Your clothes all burn.”
“What does that mean? You said they would be washed.”
“Not wash. Clean. Not in water. In fire.”
“You put my clothes in a fire? They have burned?”
“Ghi.”
“Are you a fire worshiper too, or are you just divanè? You sent them to be washed in fire instead of water? Olà, Gebr! Persian! Olà, whoremaster!”
“No make trouble!” the girl pleaded, looking scared. “I give you dirham back.”
“I cannot wear a dirham across the city! What kind of lunatic place is this? Why did you people burn my clothes?”
“Wait. Look.” She snatched up a piece of unburned charcoal from the brazier and gave it a swipe across a sleeve of her own tunic to make a black mark. Then she held the sleeve over the burning coals.
“You are divanè!” I exclaimed. But the cloth did not take fire. There was only a single flash as the black mark burned away. The girl took the sleeve from the fire to show me how it was suddenly spotless, and babbled a mixture of Pashtun and Farsi, of which I gradually got the import. That heavy and mysterious fabric was always cleaned in that manner, and my clothes had been so crusty that she had taken them to be of the same material.
“All right,” I said. “I forgive you. It was a well-intentioned mistake. But I am still without anything to wear. Now what?”
She indicated that I could choose which of two things I would do. I could lodge a complaint with the Gebr master, and demand that he procure new raiment for me, which would cost the girl her day’s wages and probably a beating besides. Or I could put on what clothes were available—meaning some of hers—and go across the city of Balkh in feminine masquerade. Well, that meant no choice at all; I must be a gentleman; therefore I must play the lady.
I scuttled out through the shop as fast as I could, but I was still adjusting my chador veil, and the old Gebr behind the counter raised his eyebrows, exclaiming, “You took me seriously! You are showing me a beautiful one among these country rustics!”
I snarled at him one of the few Pashtun expressions I knew: “Bahi chut!” which is a directive to do something to one’s own sister.
He guffawed and called after me, “I would, if she were as pretty as you!” while I scurried out into the still falling snow.
Except for stumbling now and then, because I could see the ground only dimly through the obscuring snow and my chador, and also because I frequently stepped on my own hems, I got back to the karwansarai without incident. That disappointed me a little, for I had gone the whole way with my teeth and fists clenched and my temper seething, hoping to be rudely addressed or winked at by some Eve-baiting oaf, so I could kill him. I slipped into the inn by a rear door, unobserved, and hurried to put on clothes of my own, and started to throw away the girl’s. But then I reconsidered, and cut from her gown a square of the cloth to keep for a curiosity, and with it I have since astonished many persons disinclined to believe that any cloth could be proof against fire.
Now, I had heard of such a substance long before I left Venice. I had heard priests tell that the Pope at Rome kept among the treasured relics of the Church a sudarium, a cloth which had been used to wipe the Holy Brow of Jesus Christ. The cloth had been so sanctified by that use, they said, that it could nevermore be destroyed. It could be thrown into a fire, and left there for a long time, and taken out again miraculously entire and unscorched. I also had heard a distinguished physician contest the priestly claim that it was the Holy Sweat which made the sudarium impervious to destruction. He insisted that the cloth must be woven of the wool of the salamander, that creature which Aristotle averred lives comfortably in fire.
I will respectfully contradict both the reverent believers and the pragmatic Aristotelian. For I took the trouble to inquire about that unburnable fabric woven by the Gebr fire worshipers, and eventually I was shown how it is made, and the truth of the matter is this. In the mountains in the region of Balkh is found a certain rock of palpable softness. When that rock is crushed, it comes apart not in grains, as of sand, but in fibers, as of raw flax. And those fibers, after repeated mashing and drying and washing and drying again and carding and spindling, are spun together into thread. It is clear that of any thread a cloth can be woven, and it is equally clear that a cloth made of earth’s rock ought not burn. The curious rock and the coarse fiber and the magical material woven of it, all are regarded by the Gebr as sacred to their fire god Ahura Mazda, and they call that substance by a word meaning “unsoilable stone,” which I take the liberty of rendering in a more civilized tongue as amianthus.